Living with an Invisible Dis-ease

fibromyalgia and creativity

“My anxiety remains an unhealed wound that, at times, holds me back and fills me with shame-but it may also be, at the same time, a source of strength and a bestower of certain blessings”, Scott Stossel

I believe fibromyalgia is an extreme case of prolonged anxiety that began in early life, perhaps in utero, or is even genetic. Furthermore, the concept of a ‘highly sensitive person’ , Elaine Aron’s works of several decades, has changed for me to also mean the highly anxious person, that is, the two are interchangeable. Having just read both Smith’s Monkey Mind and Stossel’s My Age of Anxiety memoirs with his science and historical account of anxiety, I have become convinced that fibromyalgia is another word for heightened anxiety in a highly sensitive person.